Their slogan is “2 girls. 1 globe. No regrets.” And their site, Globetrottergirls.com, is a lively guide to — you guessed it — global travel. The GlobetrotterGirls are Jessica, a U.S.-born freelance travel editor and writer, and Dani, a German freelance photographer. The happy couple took time from their busy travel schedules to share some of their favorite experiences in Mexico.

When was your first visit to Mexico, and what’s your happiest memory from the trip?
We flew in to Mexico City not knowing how long we would be in the country and ended up spending just under three months in Mexico, so we have a lot of happy memories. We rented bikes and discovered an old train station in Valladolid on the Yucatan, discovered Mexican food we had never heard of before, like Tlayudas and Sopes, and drank big fruit licuados (shakes) at every turn.

We lived in Oaxaca for two weeks, but far outside the center in the Colonias, and although it was definitely a very poor area (most houses were of corrugated tin, and there we were in a beautiful three bedroom bungalow) we appreciated every day how friendly and helpful all our neighbors were around us. We also spent a month in an apartment in Playa del Carmen, working in the morning and soaking up the sun in the afternoons.

GlobetrotterGirls Jessica and Dani, outside the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

What are your top three favorite destinations in Mexico, and why?• Valladolid: This colorful colonial city is small, yet thriving. There are a limited number of tourists, so the people out in the squares and shopping in the stores are locals going about their day. It’s a great peek at typical daily life in Mexico.

• Mexico City: Perhaps we shouldn’t have been so surprised at this, but Mexico City is so incredibly cosmopolitan. We went to art exhibits, ate at vegetarian restaurants, listened to live music everywhere, drank coffee in cafes with stained-glass windows from the 19th century, laid in parks, sampled street food on the go — and did this all hand-in-hand, as Mexico City just so happens to have extremely liberal views toward the LGBT community as well.

• Mahahual: This little beach town is two hours south of Tulum on the Costa Maya. Throbbing with visitors two days a week when the cruise ships arrive, the rest of the time Mahuahal is nearly empty, which means you have all the delicious restaurants, cheap beer and absolutely pristine Caribbean sea almost to yourself.

We have only been south of Mexico City, so we are sure that we would find at least one more absolute favorite place north of DF as well.

What are the biggest surprises you’ve found as you’ve gotten to know Mexico better?How safe we feel in general. We almost decided to skip Mexico altogether as friends and family warned us of our imminent death and yet, even in Mexico City, we felt as safe as anywhere else we have traveled.

Also, Mexican food is nothing like the Tex-Mex we serve up in the U.S. and have spread around the world. There is a distinct lack of cheese, for example, there are a ton of non-meat dishes and the variations of salsas are amazing.

What is your favorite Mexican food?Speaking of food 🙂 We absolutely love picking up a couple of potato tacos whenever we pass a street food vendor. They are just fried potatoes, in a tortilla, with lettuce, maybe a bit of tomato or cream and salsa. Also, we had already long since known about Huevos Rancheros (two poached/fried eggs on a bed of black beans and corn tortillas with salsa on top), but when we were in Palenque visiting the famous Mayan ruins there, we discovered Huevos Motulenos for the first time. Similar to Rancheros, this is an even more of a delicious pile of Mexican goodness – corn tortillas, beans, then eggs, then fried plantains, sometimes peas, then tomato salsa finished off with melted cheese on top. Incredible!

What’s your idea of a perfect day in Mexico?Breakfast is our favorite meal of the day, so we’d get up early and make sure to head to a local restaurant for some sort of egg breakfast a fresh fruit shake and coffee. Then we would spend the morning walking around exploring the town or city that we are in, or maybe even rent bikes to see more and work up even more of an appetite. The streets of Mexico are like a spread-out food buffet, so for lunch we would just graze as we continued to explore, grabbing tacos here, flautas there, and hopefully a cup of cut up pineapple, papaya, cantaloupe and watermelon. The afternoons are inevitably hot, so we would take shelter in a cafe or if possible an art exhibit or gallery somewhere.

Mexican art is so intelligent, vibrant and cheeky! If we are near a beach or possibly a cenote we would spend the rest of the afternoon swimming, but if not there is nowhere better to take in Mexican life than a town’s zocalo, or Central Park, right when everyone is getting off work and famlies are spending time together there. Then we would go back to our hotel and get ready for dinner at one of the places we would have checked out in town that morning. We would order lots of small plates, pour on on way too much hot sauce and wash it down with ice cold cans of Tecate and bottles of Pacifico beer. If we happen to make friends, after that, there might be some tequila or mescal drinking to be done!